Plainchant - by Eamon Grennan (Paperback)

About the Book

Poems that prompt and deepen our attention to the world.

Book Synopsis

Grennan's new collection shows again his powers of close, patient, plainspoken observation. Whether his gaze falls on the dash of a hare, dive of a gannet, heavy stillness of a rain-flecked cow, the song of a lark, or the scurry of an ant across a page of Celan, the poem that emerges is a celebration of the momentary fact, how a particular detail can, when sufficiently attended to, glow with the truth of its own unrepeatable self. Set mostly in the landscape of coastal Connemara, these poems can also bring to vivid life a painting by Bonnard, a family walk, a childhood memory, a chance encounter, a man scything a field, or a brief probing of the work of Beckett. Paying attention is this poet's credo, coaxing his simple but layered, often interrogative language into revealing shapes. Grennan also chooses the repeated format of the poems themselves (justified right and left margins of different widths), aligning accident with design, choice with chance, to articulate his sense of the world as an energy poised dynamically between fact and form, between the time-anchored data of the world and the shaping rapture of art. These are poems that serve--through their intensely observed details and the rich, patient exactitudes of Grennan's language--to sharpen our own habits of attention, renewing our sense of the often unnoticed worlds around us.

Review Quotes

"In his gripping new poetry collection Plainchant, Eamon Grennan weaves a revelatory narrative, rich with precise detail, layered symbolism, and evocative imagery. Plainchant is a powerful compilation of personal reflections." --Maud Welch, Good River Review

"The delightful and sonically textured prose poems in Irish poet Grennan's latest (after There Now) pay whimsical and deep attention to the world. The wonders of daily life and nature abound...With his excellent ear and verbal wit, Grennan reveals a world overlooked."--Publishers Weekly

"Grennan, an Irish poet who taught for many years at Vassar College, remains beautifully "knacky"--artful, cunning--about the miraculous abundance of the world, but his intention here is as "bright and see-through and hard at once" as the window-shaped form of these poems."--David Woo, Poetry Foundation